The present invention relates to media multicasting, and more particularly, to multicast services in which user interactions influence the way in which media is presented to users.
Online communities exist in which users can interact and share media. For example, services are available that allow people to share songs and videos by uploading them to a web page associated with an internet site. A user of the service can navigate to the web page using navigation buttons and keyword searches. Upon reaching the web page, the uploaded songs and videos can be played for the user using a media player. The user can provide feedback on the songs and videos in the form of comments and ratings and can view the comments and ratings of other users.
Although the online communities that are associated with services such as these provide an opportunity for users to interact with each other, users do not generally share media playback experiences at the same time. This can limit the opportunities that users have to interact with each other.
It would therefore be desirable to be able to provide a multicast media service that multicasts media files to multiple users while allowing the users that are viewing the multicast media to interact with each other in real time.